One night we were on the gangway, Uncle Will, Ruth Rose, Serge and myself and all of a sudden a great big squid came up and made a kind of “Ha—aa.” He tried his best [[18]]to take hold of the net with which Serge tried to grab at him, and put his huge tentacles out of the water. He was a sickly whitish color. When we brought the smaller ones caught in a trawl net into the aquarium later however they changed color several times, turning from this whitish to a bright red as quick as could be. Squids can squirt out an inky liquid which discolors the water so that they cannot be seen by their enemies. This is used in making sepia ink.
For an hour or two in the afternoon I had my line over and at sunset time it hooked a 32-pound dolphin fish, a coryphinea. He was fifty-six inches long, a lovely bluish green color, yellow tail, green back and blue sides. During the day we had seen many of them swimming two or three feet beneath the surface around our bow, and darting right near under the pulpit. The crew had had one hooked but lost it; and Dr. Cady also had one hooked. [[19]]
In pulling it up over the boom there was great fun and excitement for it was heavy, slippery and three men helped before landing it.
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THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS
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These islands were first called the Islands of Tortoises, and they have been known for a hundred years or more. There are about sixty of them and they are located mostly on or south of the equator six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador to which country they belong. They are volcanic islands with lava rock and dry sandy dust. Very little else except cactus or scrubby bushes grows on most of them.